Key to freshwater fish families in New Zealand

This is a guide for identifying what family a fish is in, but to go futher and identify the species, you need to use our ID guides and keys.

Start at the top and work your way through the choices in the table below. In this key, we have relied on obvious external features and have tried to avoid using technical terms. There are a few features you might not be familiar with - look in the glossary for a definition.Use the Fish Finder if you have a common name for the fish you want to see.